Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: RDEES@umiami.ir.miami.edu (Matthion) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: Is uploading suicide? Message-ID: Date: 15 Jan 91 22:38:56 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 34 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu JoSH (and everybody else)-- This is basically a reply to your comment on my last post on uploading. I just want to clear up what I said. I do not suggest that we build a simple model of the human neural system (HNS) and try to upload into it, but instead suggest that there may be a way to model the details of the HNS in a system that has a completely different substrate. That is, the underlying mechanism could be very different, but could still produce the needed complexity and order to "host" human consciousness. The comment was on the ability to use models of a different essential character, not on simplifying the system. Sorry for any confusion. Another comment about uploading as copying. The statement was made earlier in this thread (sorry...I don't remember who) that true uploading would require some shift in the person's consciousness during the process, or else we may simply be making a backup copy. The idea came up a little later (via JoSH) that if there are copies of a book still around, we do not consider the book to be lost. This implies certain assumptions about self-awareness. If a person does not believe in self-awareness as a phenomenon _sui_generis_ but instead as some product of the system as a whole, then I suppose that each copy is valid as equivlent to the "master." BUT, that particular "stream" will have ended, and that individual "you" will have ceased to exist. That "you" is dead. Any knowledge that it acquired, and did not leave a spare copy of, is gone. In my opinion, the interesting question is whether you can keep a running copy of experience as it happens, and then reactivate this after a body has been destroyed. If you can, did the conscious stream end and a new one start (the _sui_generis_ position)? Or is there only a small gap in an otherwise continuous experience? =========================================================================== Matthew Augustus Turner | Department of Somthing or Other RDEES@Umiami.ir.miami.edu | Analytical Engines Incorporated ============================================================================